umentary manner. The resulting series, Dragnet, which debuted on radio in 1949 and made the transition to television in 1951, has been called "the most famous procedural of all time" by mystery novelists William L. DeAndrea, Katherine V. Forrest and Max Allan Collins. The same year that Dragnet debuted on radio, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sidney Kingsley's stage play Detective Story opened on Broadway. This frank, carefully researched dramatization of a typical day in an NYPD precinct detective squad became another benchmark in the development of the police procedural. Dragnet marked a turn in the depiction of the police on screen. Instead of being corrupt laughingstocks, this was the first time police officers represented bravery and heroism. In their quest for authenticity, Dragnet's producers used real police cars and officers in their scenes. However, this also meant that in exchange, the LAPD could vet scripts for authenticity. The LAPD vetted every scene, which would allow them to remove elements they did not agree with or did not wish to draw attention to. Over the next few years, the number of novelists who picked up on the procedural trend following Dragnet's example grew to include writers like Ben Ben